STEVEN CLAYDON / CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI

Herzliche Einladung zu den Veranstaltungen der Städelschule!

Lecture:Steven ClaydonTuesday, 7 November, 19 h, Aula

Die Veranstaltung findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Steven Claydon is fascinated with overlooked moments in history, particularly British history. Drawn to the interface between politics and art in early twentieth-century Europe, his paintings and posters include references to Vorticism and the Bauhaus, while some of his sculptures refer explicitly to monuments and memorials from the turn of the last century. All of his works have a false patina of age, as if they were relics from another time. He cooperated several times with Neil Chapman, also with Chris Ofili and others. Steven Claydon is well known to the electronic music scene in London and elsewhere under his synonym "Add N to X". Some of his works can be seen at the current exhibition "Rings of Saturn" in the Tate Modern, London.

"Proud as Miami Vice, Add N To X sets the controls to the heart of the Hole, leaving earth in a hail of chrome sparks and black rubber arrows of smoke."

„I teach this to my students: you must wait and hope - there's nothing else you can do. (...) The good artists are usually the very young or the very old. The ones who are very young are so stupid that they have no fear. And when they are very old they aren't afraid any more. In the meantime, you are always, always, afraid.“ Christian Boltanski

On October 18th 2006 Christian Boltanski was awarded the Nobel Prize for the Arts, the Praemium Imperiale. The Frenchman Christian Boltanski (born 1944) is a master of stage-setting situations and spaces. In them he powerfully evokes and questions central parameters of human existence such as lifetime, identity, the body, death and our legacy.The lecture takes place in the broader framework of the exhibition „Time“ in Darmstadt, his first major monographic show in Germany for ten years.

In Co-operation with Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt and Institut Francais, Frankfurt.